(This is a long lead up to the main event, isn’t it?)
It was so smoky last night that it woke me up because I’d
left our window open and it just washed in.
The smell kinds of sits in your nose, drying everything out, but
mysteriously, none of our clothes or gear smell of smoke. It is just there.
Not surprisingly, the internet at the Odell Lake Lodge is
pretty crappy. This isn’t really an
issue but we wonder, we wonder about what is happening in Boston now, where a
massive counter-protest is planned against a purported “free speech”
rally. We see word on our social media
feeds of friends planning to go, and we see LIVE: BOSTON COUNTER PROTESTS
splayed across the incessantly-on CNN in the main lodge. We are so far away from it all, and we wonder
about our friends who will be there and how has it come to this. It is a massive relief to learn later that
everyone is well, and we are proud at the images of the great numbers who
turned out to show that free speech doesn’t mean hate.
Meanwhile, here in Odell Lake, the Post Office is open from 1-1:40
every day. No stamps for you if it is 9
a.m. and you want to mail your postcards before leaving “town.”
We have a long drive ahead, going north but first . . . more
volcano stuff! I imagine that at some
point in the distant past it was a primordial landscape of just constantly
sputtering and spewing mountains, all black and gray and red and orange and
bubbling. I don’t think it actually
looked like that most of the time but still.
We drive up a rutty, dirty, painfully long dirt road to get to the
Volcano Cast Forest, part of the Newberry Volcano National Monument. Here there is more volcanic rubble[1],
but also a path you can walk on that takes you by some things that look a bit
like big black concrete drainage pipes but are actually the remnants of lava
casts of trees. One explosion about 6000
years ago sent a lava flow over this forest, encasing trees, the moisture from
which caused the lava to harden quickly around the trees, which eventually
degraded – leaving hollow casts of their trunks. We spend some time wondering how the heck anyone
found this truly otherworldly landscape[2],
and what it must have looked like when they did, maybe 80 or so years ago. The casts have likely broken down since then,
as many of them are more or less at ground level now. Unlike many of the other amazing natural
marvels in Oregon, there aren’t many people here, which adds to the surreal
quality.
Leaving Newberry we chance upon a fellow selling fresh mountain
huckleberries out of the back of his truck.
Now this is a real local delicacy, and we’re told that they cost a king’s
ransom because a) they are harvested by hand and b) it’s actually Santa’s elves
who pick them in the off-season, and who doesn’t want to support Santa? They are a deep beautiful purple and taste
pretty good so we’ll buy it – the berries and the story.
Redmond was the stop for lunch at yet another excellent
brewpub – there are way too many of these here, how do these people get any
work done? – where we discover another delicious manifestation of the
marionberry: soda! The fires have come close here, we’re told,
but for us, the skies are clearing.
Our long drive takes us through Madras, which is kind of
ground zero for Eclipsapalooza here in Oregon – totality will be long, and
there is lots of space that has been organized into “Solartown,” a massive
campsite already jammed with all manner of camp vehicles. Most of the t-shirts that we see for sale are
pretty hokey, but we do wonder what “eclipse metal arts” might entail. We also wonder what “unabombers.com – learn
about the lies” is all about.[3] The possibilities are endless.
No stopping, however, because we have to get to our
overnight stop at Hood River, which I am only just now realizing is confusingly
located on the Columbia River. But it is
near Mount Hood, up which we drive way above the treeline to marvel at the
snowfield where ski camps are still being held and at the beautiful WPA-era
Timberline Lodge, one of the great old wilderness lodges in the United
States. This was the first big project
of the WPA and employed all manner of builders and artists and workers, so was
considered a great success for the program.
It is filled with splendid photographs from the glory days of ski style,
as well as fantastic carvings and murals and stained glass of the local
wildlife. There is a spectacular central
atrium with heavy furniture and massive fireplaces in which only logs can
burn. Izzy and I immediately think we
should spend a ski trip here, but we’re reminded that the snow is generally
heavy and wet here, and while the lodge is gorgeous, the ski area is not that
big and doesn’t have a lot of challenging terrain so a day or two might do
it. Maybe a kid will go to school out
here, and we’ll have a reason to come back in the winter.
What you go up, you have to come down and the road down from
Mt. Hood into the stylin’ town of Hood River takes us into a verdant valley
that is bursting with peach and apple and pear orchards. This bodes well for dinner, I think, and the
Pine Street Kitchen does not disappoint with great pastas and a fine peach cake
for dessert. Not to mention the
fermentation sampler to start, which involves a lot of kraut. Fortunately this restaurant is at the top of
a steep hill, and I have underestimated the walk so we have some ways to digest
in addition to all the good bacteria we’ve just ingested.
We may have the last hotel rooms in the entire Columbia
River Gorge, this place is rocking with eclipse viewers!
[1] Putting it mildly.
The Newberry Volcano, still active in many ways, is the size of Rhode
Island! The caldera is estimated to be
17 miles wide. So the whole area that
we’ve been hanging out in is just one really really big volcano.
[2] I’m not the only one to classify it as otherworldly –
apparently NASA sent astronauts there in the 1960s, to practice for lunar
landings!
[3] Ted Kaczynski was framed, that’s what. Learn more at unabombers.com!
No comments:
Post a Comment